What needs to be removed to make high level dungeons work?

[sabs]

Why does Alexander not have magic items? or Wizards? Or Clerics of Athena who kick taht Lich King's ass all over the battle field?

Look at D&D theres' tons of 3rd through 5th level people. There's enough people that you can buy magic items in SHOPS.

Yes the Lich King Rules. But there's also tons of people who CAN kick his ass around. And not just Elminster.

[hyzmarca]

And that's how you get around encounter skipping, by the way. The encounter isn't the monster or the trap, the encounter is the goal. Thus the only way to skip it is for the players to decide that the goal itself is stupid.

So you're basically proposing that there are no side encounters other than the goal battle? Literally, the entire bad guy's castle is empty except for the throne room containing him and his person guard? That's like taking any novel involving a journey and slicing out all but the first and final chapter. You've solved your problem of not being able to afford condoms by chopping your dick off. I'm not really sold.

Not at all. What I'm proposing is that you build a sandbox and let the players play.

You're supposed to design a setting, populate it with NPCs, then hand that setting off to your players and say "have fun".

A good DM says, "This is the world, this is your goal, I look forward to seeing what you come up with"

A bad DM says, "This is the world, this is your goal, and these are the exact steps you must take to accomplish it". That's railroading.

You can't easily predict what your players will do, but you're not supposed to. There is a reason why D&D has encounter tables and generic monsters. A DM needs that flexibility.

The important the here is that you can't just scry&die Hirohito. You have the capability, but killing the Emperor is insufficient to defeat the Empire. It's actually counter-productive in this case, since you need him alive to issue the surrender.

Armies are crap in D&D, it's the general who everyone cares about. Kill him and everything falls.

That's because DMs use crap tactics and design crap fortifications. As Tucker's Kobolds show us, a competent HD army can take any any high level adventuring party.

[sabs]

You talk abotu the Wizard and all his spells. But there's no mention of the things Clerics can do. Or the idea that there's a High Level Rogue with cool magic items, and umd, and the shiv of death+sneak attack. The Fighter in his +5 armor, with his vorpal sword +5, and his rod of command. (and a dozen other magic items).

High Level melee characters are supposed to have a wide range of magic items. It's like in shadowrun when GMs limit access to cyberware/money and then complain that everyone plays a spellcaster.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah, the problem I have with people saying "High level adventure" is that it usually means "Wizards cast cool spells and the warriors follow them".

That's because 'warrior', at least how D&D implements it, isn't a high-level concept. You might as well be complaining that 1st level pants-wetting peasant girl isn't an appropriate concept for a low-level dungeon crawl.

Seriously, list all of the archetypical characters for Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue. The characters that embody these classes tend to be guys like Conan and the Grey Mouser and Prince Philip. If you decide that 'warriors' should end up looking like Ichigo and Hercules then a lot of these problems go away. Elminster goes 'I could teleport to that dungeon' and Wonder Woman goes 'bitch, please, I could FLY faster than you could cast yourself there'. Raistlin goes 'I could summon that castle from the swampy depths' and Kenshiro goes 'I could punch out all of the water in the swamp in a few seconds'. Etc..

[FatR]

So you're basically proposing that there are no side encounters other than the goal battle? Literally, the entire bad guy's castle is empty except for the throne room containing him and his person guard? That's like taking any novel involving a journey and slicing out all but the first and final chapter.

No that's like recreating any medium-to-high-power-level final confrontation that doesn't sucks ass. Just a few examples from fantasy works with above-mundane power level I've watched/read to the end recently and that featured a Big Bad's fortress: in Blue Dragon PCs blow the castle the fuck away, alongside with the Big Bad; in Wakfu PC skips right to fighting the Big Bad and the core supporting cast fights the superpowered named henchmen; in Shin Angyo Onshi, PC has only one (and extremelely plot-important) encounter before confronting the Big Bad, he is briefly stalled by a plot-unimportant uberhenchman, but is bailed by a friendly NPC so he can proceed, the supporting cast fights the Big Bad's elite crew for 90% of the time. Throngs of mooks solely or mostly fight each other in the background.

So your ideas are quite literally disconnected from realitly.

[tzor]

Are we seriously debating the crap half assed politics of the crap half assed campaign worlds that make up most D&D scenarios? Debating it as though it is supposed to make sense? It won’t make sense. In order for something to even start to make sense someone has to want it to make sense.

If you look at the original edition, high level characters were in charge of things. Name level gave you rank, title, followers, a way to claim a little piece of land and call it your own. That dropped out of favour in later editions, but even then it’s not necessary in order to maintain something that makes sense.

You can make it work by something I call the reverse Oz effect. (Or “Pay no attention to the wizards that are behind the curtain.”) D&D really can’t be feudal on a number of levels. (Note that by definition capital tends to hurt feudalism and by definition lairs with tons of gold is pure capital.) Instead D&D is really more suited to the guild model (the thieves’ guild, the assassin’s guild, the wizard’s guild, the merchant’s guild, and technically speaking even most churches form a guild mentality). Multiple guilds compete, interact and form oligarchies. Anyone who is on the “top” of the pyramid is by definition someone who is acceptable to all the guilds in the oligarchy. (Mostly harmless, or at least it is in his best interest to appear to be so.) He rules at their pleasure and knows it.

So if you kill the king … well nothing really happens. The oligarchy is in control and you can’t kill them. That’s the important thing. That guy who collects enough taxes to make the streets appear to be safe? Peanuts!

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's because DMs use crap tactics and design crap fortifications. As Tucker's Kobolds show us, a competent HD army can take any any high level adventuring party.

These are mostly quirks of the rules. You're supposed to be able to slaughter thousands of kobolds without breaking a sweat at a certain point in the game. It comes with the territory. Having someone thwart your progress by putting up a few snares or shooting at you from a tree or covering up a pit with leaves is a fucking insult.

[echoVanguard]

The people being ruled have no say so in how they're ruled under that government.

Feudalism is a very crude form of autocracy, which is by definition illegitimate because they are not beholden to the people they govern; the only way the people get a say-so is by dissolving the autocracy. And because despots in D&D actually have enough power to kick the asses of every soldier in their army this never happens.

This is wrong on several counts:
1. Feudalism is not a form of autocracy. Manorialism, which is a component of feudalism, did allow for autocratic lordships, but it is not intrinsic.
2. Autocracies are not illegitimate by definition, especially when your type of legitimacy is undefined. Traditional Legitimacy is a valid form of political legitimacy, and Manorialism was literally built on traditional legitimacy.
3. Despots in D&D do not always have enough power to singlehandedly destroy their own armies - in fact, the sourcebooks clearly state that most rules are aristocrats. You can argue that this doesn't make sense if you want, but attempting to use your own assertion as fact is both poor logic and poor strategy.

echo

[Novembermike]

(Note that by definition capital tends to hurt feudalism and by definition lairs with tons of gold is pure capital.)

Wait, what?

[hyzmarca]

That's what feudalism is. There's no reason for one person to be on top instead of another. They didn't get elected, they just stabbed people until everyone fell into line - or won the birth lottery by having a parent who did.

There is a lot of politics involved, though. You can't just stab people, you need the support of people who have large sums of money. You gain that support by doing what they want you to do and giving them cool hereditary titles.

The landed gentry aren't facestabbers. They're capitalists. The only distinction between the lord of a large manor and turn-of-the-century robber baron who owns a factory and the company town around it, complete with his own paramilitary security force, is the nature of their industry.

But they're power doesn't really come from facestabbing. Their power comes from control of productive capital, in this case farm land, and the wealth that comes with it. That wealth, in turn, permits facestabbing.

The King, on the other hand, gets his power from the fact that enough of the nobles like him that they're not going to revolt. The nobles have enough sense to know that they can get richer if they have a larger system in place and they need a leader that they can all agree on. Facestabbing the dissenters may be part of that agreement, but the fact remains that the King must have significant support.

(Note that by definition capital tends to hurt feudalism and by definition lairs with tons of gold is pure capital.)

Wait, what?

Well, the rise of the middle class and industrialization tends to hurt feudalism. Capital is part of that. And most D&D worlds seriously have enough tech to go steampunk on your ass without much effort.

[Novembermike]

(Note that by definition capital tends to hurt feudalism and by definition lairs with tons of gold is pure capital.)

Wait, what?

Well, the rise of the middle class and industrialization tends to hurt feudalism. Capital is part of that. And most D&D worlds seriously have enough tech to go steampunk on your ass without much effort.

Yes, but a lair with a ton of gold in it has zero capital. Capital != wealth.

[FatR]

If a king decides that taxes are going to go up from 15% to 25%, the peasants can't just suddenly up and say that they're going to be at 15% anyway, not without overthrowing the king.

Actually, under actual European feudalism (not the mental construct that seems to be popular on this forum) pulling shit like arbitrarily increasing taxes was far beyond kings' power. Even during a major conflict, like Hundreds Years' War. For that matter, kings often had no power to collect any taxes at all on most of lands nominally under their rule. Compared to modern governments, actual power and control of rulers - once rule of tribal chieftains fully transformed into thing that's usually called "feudalism" was small, and limited. And attemps to actually introduce taxes as we know it in later centuries, during the transition to so-called "absolutism" were often met by massive social unrest and numerous small-scale riots.

But that's neither here, not here. Can we go back to dungeons now?

[Lago PARANOIA]

1. Feudalism is not a form of autocracy. Manorialism, which is a component of feudalism, did allow for autocratic lordships, but it is not intrinsic.

I'm obviously referring to the common use term where feudalism is a Medieval/Dark Age European-flavored form of manorialism. Or rather, the serfdom component of manorialism, which is what people usually think of when they refer to feudalism. Thanks for uselessly splitting hairs like that. I'm sure that helps you win your argument.

2. Autocracies are not illegitimate by definition, especially when your type of legitimacy is undefined. Traditional Legitimacy is a valid form of political legitimacy, and Manorialism was literally built on traditional legitimacy.

When people refer to political legitimacy, they are referring to the Lockean definition where government has the consent of the governed. Feudalism/Serfdom/Manorialism/whatever the fuck does not have this. The government's interests may line up with that of their slaves/serfs, but the serfs have no say so in their condition.

3. Despots in D&D do not always have enough power to singlehandedly destroy their own armies - in fact, the sourcebooks clearly state that most rules are aristocrats. You can argue that this doesn't make sense if you want, but attempting to use your own assertion as fact is both poor logic and poor strategy.

Since when is common sense and a basic knowledge of history and government poor logic? The fact that D&D has 3rd level aristocrats issuing decrees that the local Mage's Guild obeys is retarded.

And most D&D worlds seriously have enough tech to go steampunk on your ass without much effort.

The amount of superpowered critters and NPCs in D&D should reduce the land to a blasted hellscape. Dark Sun is arguably the most realistic depiction of a D&D world there is. There's no reason why D&D should ever have had the industrial base required to even get out of caveman times without the direct intervention of some enlightened gods or a collection of smart superpowered critters, but there you go.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually, under actual European feudalism (not the mental construct that seems to be popular on this forum) pulling shit like arbitrarily increasing taxes was far beyond kings' power.

Replace kings with 'cabal of nobles' then. Sheesh.

TGD's habit of nitpicking some small component of the argument and then pretending like the thrust of the argument suddenly doesn't stand even if it has that nitpicked correction is extremely irritating.

[Username17]

That's what feudalism is. There's no reason for one person to be on top instead of another. They didn't get elected, they just stabbed people until everyone fell into line - or won the birth lottery by having a parent who did.

There is a lot of politics involved, though. You can't just stab people, you need the support of people who have large sums of money. You gain that support by doing what they want you to do and giving them cool hereditary titles.

No you don't. There's no money and no market economy. People are bartering for lumps of gold. And on of the things you can barter with is "not stabbing people in the face".

There is no social contract. You live in a Hobbesian hellscape with no government, no money, and no expectation of the rule of law. You actually can't even own something at all. There can be gold that happens to be near you, but you don't "own" it in any legal or binding sense. If someone takes it from you by an agreement in trade, it's not yours anymore; but if someone takes it from you by force, deception, or stealth it's still not yours any more!

The landed gentry aren't facestabbers.

The "landed gentry" don't exist, because you can't own land. You can only stand on land. There would have to be some sort of government and social contract to acknowledge ownership. But you don't have a deed, you have a band of orcs and you fucking squat the dungeon until you leave or someone takes it from you.

D&D is "society" without John Stewart Mill or even Hobbes. Leviathan has not been written and it is literally impossible for anyone to own anything more than a badger owns a hole. The backing of people who have valuable skills like blacksmiths or farmers might be important, but the backing of people who own a lot of wealth literally cannot be - because wealth cannot be owned without a governmental framework of ownership.

-Username17

[Novembermike]

So, Frank Trollman, you're saying that you don't understand Feudalism?

[Username17]

So, Frank Trollman, you're saying that you don't understand Feudalism?

I'm saying your fappery will get you nowhere and I am fucking tired of your whining.

You go on ignore now.

-Username17

[FatR]

I'm rather tired of you, Frank, pretending that your personal setting is DnD. Your mental constructs - while not bad as a setting - don't align with either results of pushing RAW to logical conclusions (totalitarian magicpunk state or magical utopia, depending on the ruling team, at least for 3.X), or with traditional fluff. Or with projecting history on DnD.

[Lago PARANOIA]

don't align with either results of pushing RAW to logical conclusions (totalitarian magicpunk state or magical utopia, depending on the ruling team, at least for 3.X),

If you don't like it, I'll bump up a thread for you discussing the deconstruction of D&D. The thought of D&D being a totalitarian magicpunk state or utopia is laughably naive, though, without 'lolno' writer fiat on the level of Batman out-armwrestling the Incredible Hulk.

Or with projecting history on DnD.

Oh really now? We're suddenly not supposed to project history onto D&D when the game goes out of its way to evoke a Medieval Europe flavor on most of its setting and leaves most of the details as an exercise of imagination?

You're a fan of Bleach, right? I know you are, because we've discussed this in the Exalted thread. What is your feeling on the current fan interpretation of Soul Society as a hellish slavepit rather than the flawed-but-inoffensive feudal Japan pastiche Kubo was trying to go for?

[Novembermike]

So, Frank Trollman, you're saying that you don't understand Feudalism?

I'm saying your fappery will get you nowhere and I am fucking tired of your whining.

You go on ignore now.

-Username17

The refuge of idiots.

Oh really now? We're suddenly not supposed to project history onto D&D when the game goes out of its way to evoke a Medieval Europe flavor on most of its setting and leaves most of the details as an exercise of imagination?

I think he's pointing out the fact that the "history" Frank Trollman is trying to project on DnD isn't history, it's something that came out of the echo chamber of his mind. His post above on Feudalism bears almost no resemblance to reality. Feudalism was a set of social contracts. A Lord would have vassals, whom he would have obligations toward and whom would have some obligation to the lord (vassal gets land, lord gets soldiers generally). Contracts between lords would generally be arbitrated by a higher lord, but this generally resembled national politics more than modern law (that is, if somebody stole something from you you'd get it back unless the thief was powerful enough to ignore the consequences). He also claims that you can't own land which is somewhat odd. You don't necessarily have modern concepts of ownership, but as long as you maintain your feudal contract you have the land. I'm also not sure what his concept of a "market economy" is since I'm not aware of large amounts of communist style price fixing on items like iron, wheat, wool etc.

[Username17]

I'm rather tired of you, Frank, pretending that your personal setting is DnD.

Dude, I'm not even talking about my personal setting. I'm talking about a game where you kill people and take their stuff. That fact alone means that Lockeian Private Property does not exist.

Killing people and taking their stuff is completely integral to D&D. Any setting that has that by definition does not and cannot have "ownership" in the modern sense of the term.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

Well, I think Lago addressed the king issue well enough, so I'll just address this.

Free will is the ultimate knot-cutting tool. Bemoaning simplified knot-cutting when the 800 pound gorilla in the room is the entire *point* of the game is stupid and asinine.

Refusing to undertake the quest isn't a knot cut, it's a failure condition. Failure is always going to be an option, regardless of what you do. The PCs could always simply die.

If they're not going to take on the quest the DM prepared, then why did the players show up to the session in the first place? This isn't a rules issue so much as an underlying problem with the group itself.

So wait, you blame the players for not being able to see into the future and figure out that the MC's adventure is going to suck or that he's going to throw a temper tantrum because you outsmart him? Jesus what an asshole.

Besides, free will is more than "I refuse to take the mission". I was simply rolling it back to the very most basic binary choice that free will can exercise: Do you participate in the entire mission or do you make/take/insist on option B whatever that is?

I reiterate: Show me one published adventure that doesn't break when free will is given to the players. Throw out scry and teleport and all the other "knot-cutting" spells/abilities and just focus on free will. So far you're nit-picking and not answering the question, which I've asked in this thread alone multiple times. I insist that if you give players free will they will inevitably break any and every adventure written sooner or later, regardless of if they have access to teleport and scry and wish and miracle. Which means that saying teleport is broken because no module takes it into account successfully is bullshit, because no module takes *free will* into account. The very concept of writing down an adventure module means it's inflexible and incapable of dealing with players who are imaginative and creative.

[Novembermike]

I'm rather tired of you, Frank, pretending that your personal setting is DnD.

Dude, I'm not even talking about my personal setting. I'm talking about a game where you kill people and take their stuff. That fact alone means that Lockeian Private Property does not exist.

Killing people and taking their stuff is completely integral to D&D. Any setting that has that by definition does not and cannot have "ownership" in the modern sense of the term.

-Username17

Just like the Russian invasion of Poland disproves Lockeian Private Property in our world.

wat

Also, I think you can actually reconcile Locke's Theory of Private Property with DnD. IIRC the theory states that property is either Private or Common, with the caveat that property that is "wasted" is common property. The property of a dead man without heirs would be "wasted" and as such common property until the adventurers take it.

[TheFlatline]

My point is that free will trumps pre-written modules. Period. The characters first say "non serviam", and then the players if that doesn't work. The module breaks sooner or later, even if by "breaking" the players just don't play ball.

Alright then. So, now what? You posit that "free will trumps pre-written modules."
What do we do with that information?

My underlying point is that using published modules as a ruler for what is and isn't broken, especially when it comes to knot-cutting, is an inherently wrong and inaccurate tool.

Saying "name a module that can't be broken by using teleport" produces roughly the same list of "problem" modules as saying "name a module that can't be broken by giving the players free will".

The idea that someone gets paid to write a module means he's better at writing adventures is an assumption and frequently, and demonstratively wrong. Using modules then as a justification to strip player abilities away because you deem them "knot-cutting" or "game breaking" because they allow you to avoid a direct confrontation is asinine.

[TheFlatline]

That's not the problem with "skipping" or "knot-cutting" or whatever, that's the problem with inserting low-level shit into high-level adventures. Almost any high-level character in any medium will be techinically able to "skip" such adventure by either levelling the entire goddamn castle or creating some sort of screw-you area effect that will take out everyone not on the same level as him within the area.

Ok, let's take a high level party. Barbarian, Ranger, Rogue and Bard. How would they go about that adventure?

This is a trick question. There's no way a barbarian, ranger, rogue, and bard would survive long enough to reach high level.

And if they were assembled to become a high level party, the first thing they'd do is go find a really good wizard or cleric to join them.

edit:

Yeah, it's like how heroic fantasy tends to get worse the more fast travel there is. In the WoT series tehre was a serious decrease in the story quality once everyone learned how to Travel. Individual settings became less distinct and he had to make up reasons for characters not to teleport around to solve all their problems. The best perspective in the later books was Mat's in large part because there was an actual setting around him with customs that he had to work around.

Congratulations. You are the first carbon-based life form to ever argue that Wheel of Time needed to move *slower* than it's already glacial pace by spending a third of the book letting characters ride from city A to city B.

Besides, 90% of the traveling done occurs between places that have already been visited. And the lack of focus on locations has nothing to do with the enlarged scope and the 50 characters you're following. It's all the fault of fast travel. A-yup.

Just like hyperdrive ruined Star Wars. The Phantom Menace would have been the best movie ever if we got a 2001-style 3 hour movie where Anakin and Jar-Jar got an order of magnitude more screen time.